How Stargate Ended Up Filming A Movie In The Arctic

Stargate: Continuum wasn’t just a fantastic time-travel story to wrap up Stargate SG-1‘s 11-year run. Released in 2008, the direct-to-DVD movie set a record for the northernmost film production, with more than a dozen cast and crew from Vancouver, British Columbia flying north to the A.P.L.I.S. base to film on an ice floe in the Arctic.

The makeshift camp was hundreds of kilometers north of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.

How did this fantastic opportunity for Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping, Ben Browder, and others come to pass? It’s all thanks to Barry Campbell, who is former Head of Operations for the U.S. Navy’s Arctic Submarine Laboratory in San Diego … and a huge Stargate fan. His invitation to the producers at a fan convention turned into its own piece of Stargate history.

Campbell told “Dial the Gate” that it all started with an encounter with Stargate executive producer N. John Smith, who was signing autographs at a table in the convention hallway. When he found out that Campbell worked for the Navy, Smith jokingly asked if he could arrange a personal trip to the North Pole.

“I said, ‘Well, Mr. Smith, I’m pretty sure I can’t get you to the North Pole but I might be able to get you to an ice camp a couple hundred miles south of the North Pole,'” Campbell remembers. That conversation turned into an idea to bring some actors up to visit the sailors on the sub and sign some autographs … which soon turned into bringing cameras, along with Continuum director Martin Wood, and writing part of the upcoming movie to include the Arctic vistas.

Barry tells this incredible story in this clip from “Dial the Gate.” Check out this clip from the conversation:

All of the movie’s external scenes in the Arctic were shot on location, as Cameron Mitchell (Ben Browder) and Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) cross the ice in search of rescue. There they come upon Jack O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) and Major Wood (director Martin Wood), and witness the surfacing of the U.S.S. Alexandria. (That’s Barry popping out of the submarine and inviting the team to come aboard.)

Scenes on board the submarine were also filmed on the real sub, with the vessel’s actual crew playing themselves.

But the scenes that take place inside the wrecked hold of the Achilles were filmed on a frozen sound stage back in Vancouver, as co-star Michael Shanks (“Daniel Jackson”) was not able to make the trip north.

Campbell said that it was the Navy itself that pressed the idea of filming up north — including the movie’s impressive shot of a real-life nuclear submarine.

“Then I get called back into Jeff’s office again, and he said, ‘I was talking to Big Navy and they said that we would be able to probably let them film a submarine surfacing through the ice … and we might be able to let them get on the submarine and film too while they’re up there.'”

John Smith then took the offer to Stargate executive producer (and Continuum writer) Brad Wright, and the rest was history. Two years after Barry Campbell first introduced himself to John Smith at a Stargate convention, 18 people from the production went to the ice station for seven days.

Stargate: Continuum was meant to be the latest in an ongoing series of SG-1 movies. But economic factors led the studio to cancel the next in the series. Though various cast members would resurface on spin-offs Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe, Continuum went down in history as SG-1’s final story.

Visit “Dial the Gate” on YouTube to watch the full interview with Barry Campbell. While you’re there, subscribe to GateWorld’s YouTube channel for more Stargate content!